Scenes from the Obamas holiday week in Hawaii:
As you know, every December 31st since 2007, this is the day we announce the winners of this year’s Golden Dukes, our annual awards ceremony honoring great achievement in public corruption, betrayals of public trust and in many case just general ridiculousness. This year’s judges were Rick Hertzberg, Susie Bright, Alex Pareene, Sara Benincasa and TPM alum Andrew Golis.
This year’s categories were.
Meritorious Achievement in The Crazy
Unrefudiated Champion of Tea Party Wackiness
Most Outrageous Election Season Fib Issued By A Politician
Most Over-The-Top Campaign Ad
The George Allen Honors For Best Tracker-Captured Freak-Out
Best Scandal — Sex and Generalized Carnality
Best Scandal — Local Venue
Best Scandal — General Interest
Winners announced shortly.
And here we are. Join us after the jump to find out this year’s winners of the coveted Golden Duke Awards. Read More
Actually, even back in the 19th Century this was a pretty archaic idea. There’s a difference between gold-backed currency and actual gold. Like we’ll only accept your taxes in physical gold coins. But Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) has just introduced a bill in the state legislature mandating that Georgia only accept taxes in gold coins.
Ryan Reilly brings us the backstory on Maryland political operative Julius Henson, whose history of dirty tricks — including this year’s bogus robocall scheme — is so notorious that a rival operative once said, “Some people don’t want to even breathe the same air as him.”
Looking back over this year I’m inclined to think of it as the year that conservatives decided that we should be using other things for money instead of moeny.
Today I noticed that state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) of Georgia has introduced a bill to mandate that the state of Georgia conduct all its transactions in gold coins — taxes in, payments out, the whole bit. Specifically “pre-1965 silver coins, silver eagles, and gold eagles.” And Stuart Varney and Andrew Napolitano got into a lather last month about how exciting an all gold economy might be.
But it’s not just about gold. Six months ago then-candidate Sue Lowden went full barter when she endorsed the idea of bending the medical inflation cost curve by paying your doctor with chickens.
I’m not sure what other examples there are beside gold and chickens. But I feel like there were many more examples of support for moving to either a gold- or chicken-based economy. Who remembers? Who has another example?
Candidate Joe Miller (R) concedes the Alaska Senate race to write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski.
And that officially ends election night 2010, on New Year’s Eve.
It takes a special kind of reporter to have an eye to catch or actually hunt up a little segment where Michele Bachmann reveals she became a Republican after reading a ‘snotty’ novel by Gore Vidal.
Also thankful for this story: “Lowden Doubles Down on Health-Care-By-Barter: ‘Bring A Chicken to The Doctor’ Video.” Given how tough it was for Harry Reid to beat Sharron Angle who was probably one of the worst candidates ever, it’s interesting to wonder: would Reid still be Majority Leader if Lowden hadn’t self-destructed with this chicken nonsense?
Remember too, it wasn’t just one gaffe. Lowden first just suggested barter for health care. I remember several people suggested that she’d just jumbled her words and actually meant ‘bargain’ for health care. When I linked to the first story I led with the headline “I Bid Three Chickens for that M-R-I!!” But remember, she hadn’t mentioned chickens yet. Clearly I was weirdly in touch with the 2010 zeitgeist because sure enough a week later, whatever the hell she meant the first time, she’s doubling down on the barter concept by suggesting bartering chickens for health care.
And filed under ‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing that happen again’, remember back in April when Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) got in trouble for omitting any mention of slavery from his Confederate History Month proclamation? Well, up to defend McDonnell was none other than Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, telling CNN the whole thing “didn’t amount to diddly.”